Savvy litigators can often guess the outcome of a Supreme Court case by observing the oral argument. But it might also be possible to make that kind of prediction scientifically, through empirical analysis of the justices’ interactions with the advocates and with each other. In a recent paper, Tonja Jacobi and Kyle Rozema studied oral arguments from 1960 through 2015 and found that when justices interrupt each other during oral argument, they are seven percent less likely to vote together in that case. These findings add to existing data analyzing the relationship between oral arguments and the outcome of cases. A 2009 study by Timothy R. Johnson, Ryan C. Black, Jerry Goldman and Sarah Truel found that the advocate who is asked more questions is more likely to lose the case, and Bryce J. Dietrich, Ryan D. Enos and Maya Sen were able to accurately predict many of the justices’ eventual votes in a case solely through measurement of their vocal pitch at oral argument. Taken together, these studies suggest that if we crunch all the right data, we can guess how the justices will rule months before they tell us.

Jacobi’s earlier study of interruptions showed that female justices were more likely to be interrupted by their colleagues and the advocates than were male justices. This time, Jacobi and Rozema were interested in what interruptions tell us about how the justices will vote. They hypothesized that interruptions correlate with voting disagreements between the two justices involved. The authors realized that interruptions might signal something else — perhaps a broader conflict between two justices unrelated to a specific case, or an effort by those justices who generally speak less to get a word in edgewise. But after controlling for these and other possibilities, Jacobi and Rozema found that justices who interrupt each other are more likely to disagree on the outcome of the case.

The authors acknowledge that the data does not reveal the causal relationship between interruptions and voting agreement. The justices may disagree on a case outcome in part because of an interruption that occurred during the argument, or they may interrupt each other because they already know going into the oral argument that they disagree on the outcome of the case (though the latter explanation seems far more likely).

The reasons for interruptions also are unclear. The justices may be genuinely trying to persuade each other, or they may be grandstanding for the audience and the press. Or maybe none of the above. Amusingly, the authors speculate that perhaps the “interrupting Justices … simply cannot stop themselves” from jumping in before a colleague has finished her sentence, particularly in cases in which they disagree.

Jacobi and Rozema’s study is interesting for a number of reasons, but its most obvious value is in providing advance notice to the parties and the public of how the justices will vote in a given case. Today, we rely solely on sophisticated observers of oral argument to give their views about who will win. We might do better to create computer programs that can count the number of questions, identify interrupters and interruptees, and measure vocal pitch. If we input all the right data, we might find that the written opinions we wait for breathlessly every June just confirm what we already knew.

On Thursday, the justices met for their May 23 conference; John Elwood's Relist Watch compiles the petitions that were relisted for this conference.

Major Cases

Department of Commerce v. New York(1) Whether the district court erred in enjoining the secretary of the Department of Commerce from reinstating a question about citizenship to the 2020 decennial census on the ground that the secretary’s decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 701 et seq; (2) whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the APA, a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker -- including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking executive branch officials -- without a strong showing that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis; and (3) whether the secretary’s decision to add a citizenship question to the decennial census violated the enumeration clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Lamone v. BenisekIn case in which the plaintiffs allege that a Maryland congressional district was gerrymandered to retaliate against them for their political views: (1) whether the various legal claims articulated by the three-judge district court are unmanageable; (2) whether the three-judge district court erred when, in granting plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, it resolved disputes of material fact as to multiple elements of plaintiffs’ claims, failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and treated as “undisputed” evidence that is the subject of still-unresolved hearsay and other evidentiary objections; and (3) whether the three-judge district court abused its discretion in entering an injunction despite the plaintiffs’ years-long delay in seeking injunctive relief, rendering the remedy applicable to at most one election before the next decennial census necessitates another redistricting.

The American Legion v. American Humanist Association(1) Whether a 93-year-old memorial to the fallen of World War I is unconstitutional merely because it is shaped like a cross; (2) whether the constitutionality of a passive display incorporating religious symbolism should be assessed under the tests articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Van Orden v. Perry, Town of Greece v. Galloway or some other test; and (3) whether, if the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman applies, the expenditure of funds for the routine upkeep and maintenance of a cross-shaped war memorial, without more, amounts to an excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment.

Gamble v. United StatesWhether the Supreme Court should overrule the “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy clause.

Recent Decisions

Herrera v. Wyoming Wyoming’s statehood did not abrogate the Crow Tribe’s 1868 federal treaty right to hunt on the “unoccupied lands of the United States”; the lands of the Bighorn National Forest did not become categorically “occupied” when the forest was created.

Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Albrecht “Clear evidence” that the Food and Drug Administration would not have approved a change to a drug’s label – thus pre-empting a state-law failure-to-warn claim – is evidence showing that the drug manufacturer fully informed the FDA of the justifications for the warning required by state law and that the FDA, in turn, informed the drug manufacturer that the FDA would not approve a change to the drug’s label to include that warning; the question of agency disapproval is primarily one of law for a judge to decide.

Current Relists

Conference of May 23, 2019

al-Alwi v. Trump (1) Whether the government’s statutory authority to detain Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi has unraveled; (2) whether, alternatively, the government’s statutory authority to detain al-Alwi has expired because the conflict in which he was captured has ended; and (3) whether the Authorization for Use of Military Force authorizes, and the Constitution permits, detention of an individual who was not “engaged in an armed conflict against the United States” in Afghanistan prior to his capture.

Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. (1) Whether a state may require health-care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains, i.e., by burial or cremation; and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex or disability of the fetus and require abortion doctors to inform patients of the prohibition.

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On March 30, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke with former clerk Brittney Lane Kubisch and Pepperdine University President-elect James Gash at Pepperdine University School of Law. Thomas told the audience that he had no plans to retire from the Supreme Court.